Literally cryin' my eyes out at how cool this is.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 7/30

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we discussed our YAP Bling! party for ASAE's Annual Meeting in Toronto along with other fun events in the works. And we have an announcement about this chat, which is that we'll be rolling off the NTEN schedule (now that we've been doing this for a full year!!) - they are looking at other ways of doing their "office hours", and we're ready for a change. Given that, we did discuss the pros and cons of doing chats on Twitter, as well as checked out other chat sites like TinyChat and Today's Meet. We talked about Twitcam which is a way to stream live video to Twitter; this also has a chat component. We'd also like to participate more in #assnchat, the Association Chat on Twitter (Tuesdays at 2 pm EST), even though it has the worst hashtag in history. Meanwhile back at the ranch, we will probably have our final chat the week before we go off to Toronto (August 13) - but never fear, by then we will have figured out other fun ways to keep the conversation flowing.

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things. Click HERE for the chat room.

Online Community Vendor Spotlight: ThePort Network

This is the second in a series of six interviews of CEOs of online community platform providers to the association industry, in conjunction with a white paper we're writing about them. The first interview is here. The white paper will be available for free download in the next few weeks.

CEO Interview - Bob Cramer, ThePort Network

Tell us a bit about the history behind The Port Network. How did you get where you are now?

Software development is in the core DNA of ThePort Network. We were one of the first organizations to leverage XML and over the years built one of the most powerful and flexible white label social media platforms in the world. ThePort’s hard-core development focus has allowed us to stay in front of a rapidly changing industry while creating real products tailored for associations that deliver true ROI and reliability.

What's your vision for the company? Where are you going?

ThePort’s vision is to create a comprehensive social media platform that delivers tangible and measurable return on investment for our customers. This means creating new ways for associations to engage their membership and deliver real value to members. Our goal is to create the most tailored platform for associations that is also integrated with their association management systems. With ThePort’s Social Media Solutions, we can help members share news and resources online, create more involvement in association events and introduce new methods for increasing non-dues revenue. We try and listen carefully to the needs of the market and then deliver those specific solutions.

What makes ThePort's platform unique?

Being a pioneer in this field has allowed ThePort to assemble a customer list that is unrivalled. There is a reason that so many large and well-respected organizations have decided to work with ThePort. First and foremost, we deliver what we promise and that is not often the case in this new market. Many companies talk a good game, but delivering the sophisticated solutions that are needed to create online communities is much harder to do. We also support our customers diligently and continue to offer them new capability and functionality as it becomes available. We also pride ourselves on being able to deliver solutions that fit the requirements of organizations large and small.

How do you see your platform shaping the association industry? How does it change "business as usual" at the operational level?

The association industry can take their relationship with members to new heights with the power of social media. They can do this cost-effectively and with great impact. By giving people who share a passion or interest a place to congregate, exchange ideas, become thought leaders, associations can increase member participation and also develop new tools to drive revenue.

If you could use just three adjectives to describe The Port, what would they be and why?

Leadership: ThePort is the clear market leader for associations who want to deploy their own socially enabled communities.

Integrated: ThePort has built the most open platform in the industry allowing us to link together with other association management systems and databases to let appropriate information flow where it is needed.

Reliable: ThePort has the most experience and most users of any company in our space.

Stay tuned for more CEO interviews, as well as more details about the white paper in due course.

Want more info on ThePort?

www.theport.com
contact: Aaron Biddar – 678.391.7826 – aaron.biddar@theport.com
Blog: www.theport.com/blog.aspx
Twitter: @ThePortNetwork

ASAE09's hub tool rocks.

Check this out! ASAE has done a great job setting up a mobile hub for ASAE09.

To get there and play for yourself, go to http://asae09.org/ or http://asae09.org/m/ on your mobile phone. You can just view, or if you login using your normal ASAE login, you can connect it to Twitter so it will automatically append the #asae09 hashtag if you tweet from the hub. Add stuff to the "contributions" tab (although the "add to calendar" doesn't have the right dates yet). Obviously the scheduler's not working yet either since we're not at the conference yet, but it's all pretty cool...!

Anniual Hub

View more presentations from amyhissrich.

Since I'm on the topic of ASAE09, here's some stuff we'll be up to over in Toronto:

Sunday 8/16 - 3:15 - Lindy's session with Jeff Cobb on The Power of Technology on Association Education and Learning

Sunday 8/16 - 3:15 (same time - bah!!) - My session with Jason Della Rocca on CounterIntuitive Paths to Success: Upending the Status Quo this conversation will be continued by me and Elizabeth Engel in the CAE Lounge afterwards. [UPDATE: - Jason's accompanying article is out!]

Monday 8/17 - 10:30 - Buzz2009 Recap Unsession - in the unsession room, directly after the general session that day. For anyone who was at Buzz and would like to share the ideas they got from it and anything they were able to implement since; also for anyone who was unable to attend Buzz2009 and wants to hear the scoop, and anyone who's interested in Buzz2010. [UPDATE: We're assuming anyone who would be interested in our Buzz2009 recap might also be interested in talking to Charlene Li after her keynote, so we've moved this to the Engagement Lounge, where we'll talk about Buzz after Charlene's little Q&A unsession. W00t!]

Monday 8/17 - 10 pm - Bling! YAP party - not to be missed. Help us come up with the perfect YAPtini! Sponsored by Avectra and SusQtech - go to their booths to get the bling you need to get in to our VIP area.

See y'all there!

Quote of the week: Get the culture right

"Our whole belief is that if we get the culture right, then most of the other stuff, like delivering great customer service or building a long term enduring brand, will happen naturally on its own."

- Tony Hsieh, Zappos, interviewed by Entrepreneur. MUST READ. Powerful lessons that totally apply to associations and nonprofits.

Do you use social media for Professional Development activities?

Do you use social media as part of your association's professional development offerings? Are you using community building tools alongside your PD programs? If so, Lindy's looking for case studies for her session with Jeff Cobb at ASAE's annual meeting.

Here's the session description:

Social networking, collaborative online technologies, and increasing financial and time constraints require that associations rethink how they develop programs and engage members in learning activities. Discuss how to implement Web 2.0 capabilities in association learning programs and leave with new insight, a list of resources, and a commitment to implement at least two new ideas.

Contact her @lindydreyer or here.

On aligning social media strategy with your association focus

So that's a pretty meaty title for what is really a simple idea we've used in some of our presentations. The slideshow is below - only four slides so you can follow along as you read this. I'm interested to see if this makes sense to you.

In the first slide, we have three example areas where an association focuses its efforts - membership, education, advocacy. There could be any number of others, of course, but let's just use these three.

Now in your normal daily activities, we think the most interesting stuff happens when some of these overlap. When your educational activities or advocacy campaigns are so cool that they energize your members and help you recruit new members, for example. In the second slide, we show this simple overlap.

On Social Media Strategy

View more presentations from Maddie Grant.

Now put that aside for a minute. The blue diagram on the right is how we picture the social focus. On the outside, you have all the multilayered and unharnessed conversation happening in social spaces. Some of that conversation starts to engender collaboration, as people start conversing together for specific purposes. And in the middle is where that collaboration becomes collective action.

Each of those rings has its own value - you're not always looking to create collective action, in fact sometimes you're specifically looking to the serendipity of the stream, so to speak. But clearly getting from conversation to collaboration to collective action is harder and harder as you move towards the inside of the diagram. So, of course, it's no surprise that this looks like a bullseye. Lindy likes to tell the story of how she sucks at darts, and is happy if she hits the board at all. When we're talking about social media, too, it's totally OK not to hit the center of the board at first. It may take a very long time and a lot of practice to get there.

So then look at slide 3. Look at what happens when you put these two diagrams together. You can use your individual association focal areas to engender conversation and collaboration, relatively easily, as long as you have content worth discussing and work worth doing. And the sweet spot in the middle, well that's where when the association overlaps and the social overlaps really come together to fuel your collective action. Think about if the association objectives were not about membership, advocacy and education but instead events, certification and publications. Or whatever. The social projects you're really looking for in order to achieve success will be those where all these things overlap.

I figured I'd keep the final slide here too, though that could have been a separate blog post - but basically this shows how every social media project (and overall) strategy works. You define your objectives, you launch, you feed and nurture, you measure and evaluate, and you repeat. And at every single step, you listen. You pay attention. You monitor feedback continuously.

Thoughts?

NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 7/23

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week Deirdre Reid hosted for us, and the conversation was about Twitter tools, listening tools, Friendfeed (which is still confusing for many) and how the DC culture (polished, shiny cover) isn't the best fit for social media and its transparency ethos, one of the reasons national associations are slow to adapt.

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

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Online Community Vendor Spotlight: Socious

As you may have heard, Lindy and I are working on a white paper - working title Building Community For Associations: SocialFish on Six Social Networking Platform Providers to the Association Industry - which will provide information about six online community vendors. The vendors we chose are among the companies we work with, and are those who are also an integral part of the association community - which is a big plus in our opinion. They understand association issues and concerns, and understand community needs based around a framework of membership and citizenship. This post is the first of six Online Community Vendor Spotlights where we interviewed the CEO of each company. I will post one every few days in the run up to ASAE's Annual Meeting, at which time we'll have more information available on the full white paper (which will of course be a free download).

CEO Interview - Scott Balthazor, Socious

1) Tell us a bit about the history behind Socious. How did you get where you are now?

Socious was started in 2002. Two of us were batting around the problem that large scale ERP customers were having: how to find connections and solutions to problems that we knew they all had. While there were user groups and associations out there, no one had developed a secure place for them to share and network with each other over the internet. We contacted one of the largest PeopleSoft associations (the Higher Education User Group) knowing that due to their “Higher Education” nature, they would gravitate towards this type of social interaction. We built the 1st version of the software with them and Socious was born.

We then virally grew quickly as related groups heard about their success. We focused our development and support efforts on making the tools the infinitely configurable tools we have today that fit the needs of any size/style of association or user group.


2) What's your vision for the company? Where are you going?

While Socious has always been a software company, we are a service company at heart. While other companies may have more installations than us, our focus has always been on understanding our customers goals and helping them utilize our tools to meet those goals – not just getting them running. Our vision for the company is to offer unparalleled customer support to make every one of our current (and future) clients as successfully as they can be.

Part of that support is understanding where the market is going, seeing future trends, and listening to what our client’s needs are – and bringing those ideas together with cutting edge functionality. We were the first to seamlessly integrate 3rd party social networking content into user profiles, we were the first to have a full event system for chapters and sub groups, we were the first with a mobile application, and we were the first with advocacy tracking tools. For our clients to stay ahead of the curve Socious must as stay ahead as well with industry-leading functionality and support and continue to have ‘firsts.’

3) What makes Socious' platform unique?

I think the main thing that makes our software unique is the amount of functionality we offer in our software and the number of ways that it can be configured. While each client may have similar needs, each client is unique in how they want to meet those needs – and Socious has functionality to make sure every need is met. When you look at the depth of functionality in each of our modules, our difference shines through. Socious is not just a social networking tool, but a powerful knowledge repository that considers how a busy member would engage with a site like this. Our biggest advantage is that our developers have put all of this functionality in the software and still keep it easy to use.

4) How do you see your platform shaping the association industry? How does it change "business as usual" at the operational level?

Many associations look at social media as their outpost strategy (how they use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) and their private social network strategy (on their own site) as two separate strategies. Our belief is that those two strategies need to be one overall social media strategy and each of those functions must compliment the other. Socious gives associations the tools to integrate content from their member’s outpost accounts and repurpose it for use with the association. Your members already have pictures on Flickr, updates on Twitter, profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook and videos on YouTube. Don’t try to be a substitute for these tools because your website never will be. Where we change the game is allowing members to use the tools they already love and the content they already have to participate within your association in a way, before Socious, they never could.

5) If you could use just three adjectives to describe Socious, what would they be and why?

Powerful- Socious has the functionality to turn your website into a destination.
Seamless- No matter if we are integrated with an AMS, LinkedIn, YouTube or any other 3rd party system, it is easy to share information with the Socious system.
Supported- With Socious, you have a support team that is not only there for you, but cares about your success.

Stay tuned for more CEO interviews, as well as more details about the white paper in due course.

Want more info on Socious?
www.socious.com
contact: Paul Schneider, 602-734-5353
Blog: www.socious.com/paulschneider
Twitter: @paulschneideraz

Quote of the week: Authenticity is Saying Things Right

"Authenticity is saying things right. Authority is saying the right things. But transparency is saying everything. And it’s wrong. You don’t need to say everything to be transparent, and you don’t need to be transparent to be authentic and authoritative.

Just say what you mean and mean what you say."

From Michel Fortin, Don't Be Transparent, Be Authentic Instead

Personal vs professional social media identities

Check out this fab slide deck by Kivi Leroux Miller. Nice nonprofit examples, and she raises the questions you're probably asking yourself too. I have a pretty clear opinion on this issue, and I believe it will become more and more impossible to separate personal and professional digital identities, but I also think that many of us are in the pretty enviable position of being able to think about this from the start. See what you think.

Personal - Professional Mix in Social Media: For Nonprofits

View more presentations from kivilm.

NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 7/16

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

So we skipped our chat last week, as we were Buzz'ing. The week before, we had a very fun conversation about my new iPhone, (must have apps - Shazam, Urban Spoon, FourSquare, Tweetie), of course about Buzz, about Second Life and some other non-serious stuff including this fabulous bullsh*t generator.

This week, we're unfortunately off again as we have a Buzz debrief with the SmartBrief gang - where we'll be discussing the evaluation comments we've had so far, among other things (if you haven't done yours yet, go here to post your feedback) but we're SO lucky to have our lovely friend and awesome blogger Deirdre Reid hosting for us. Thanks Deirdre!

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

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Thank you SO so much

THANK YOU so much to everyone who came to Buzz2009 last week, everyone who blogged about it beforehand and will after, who tweeted from there or from afar, who watched the webcast, who had a drink (or several) with us after, and of course thank you again to all of our sponsors and advisors who helped us put it on and to SmartBrief. All of you truly rock the house. We'll surely do some more debriefing blogging in due course but I just wanted to put up a couple of quick links before all the other stuff I've neglected over the last two weeks takes over. :)

Check out our Twitter stats - as of this writing, 1,639 tweets, 334 contributors - pretty incredible considering we had just 80 people in the room!

Here's some other good stuff:

- a transcript of the tweets in readable order (*love* What The Hashtag)

- Jeremy Epstein's recap of the pre-event WOM Slam

- Lynn Morton's sweet recap of Andy Sernovitz's keynote

- I almost passed out when I heard we had 5,000 people registered for the free webcast - here's the link. I think this will not be up for long (couple of weeks?) so watch it now, it's really really good. 90 minutes you won't regret, I promise. And just in case, here's a play-by-play from the GasPedal blog.

- Jeff Hurt's analysis - from the point of view of someone participating remotely via Twitter and the webcast. Awesomesauce beyond belief.

Were you there? Two things I need you to do for me pretty please:

1) Our open evaluation post is up (yeah, who needs those annoying survey evaluations?) Please give us feedback in the comments over on the Buzz blog here and tell us what you thought. Be honest. We want to make it better and better every year we do it and we can only do that if we know what you're thinking. (And yes, the weird mic issues and spaceship HVAC noise is already on the list). We also welcome any comments from anyone who followed along remotely.

2) Share what you learned on the SmartBrief Blog. Everyone had pages and pages of notes and tweets - so spill.

Thanks to all and hope to see you back next year!!

p.s. I just have to repost the Buzz2009 scholarship submission post - read the awesome commment submissions - and in particular check out KiKi's slideshare response. Hilarious. We are so happy we were able to give out 7 scholarships this time - next year, hopefully more!

Get this badge.

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Quote of the Week: Listening Internally

"To effectively listen to customers, you must first listen internally. When you then ask your team to listen to customers, they will - not only because they know how, but because they realize that if they hear a good idea, it will get implemented."

- Eric Fletty and Jan Bottiglieri, "Step One: Quit Digging" (Culture Change Drives Association's Success - online version), Associations Now. Great article about systems thinking, non-traditional team-building and culture change from the ground up.

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Buzz2009 Twitterfountain

Wish you were here with us - but if you're not, you can still follow along! Follow the Twitterstream here. If you are on Twitter, participate, ask questions via Tweetchat here (assuming it's working, apparently it's been quirky lately...)



Next year, perhaps? Subscribe to the Buzz2009 blog for continuing conversation and future updates.

p.s. No Water Cooler Chat this week, as we are, umm, otherwise occupied at Buzz 2009... :)

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20 objectives for organizational use of Twitter for events

In an ideal world, every organization should start their social media efforts by listening on the social web, finding out where their stakeholders are, then analyzing what value could be derived from embarking upon building an official presence in those particular social spaces so they can begin to participate strategically in those conversations. Note that WHICH social spaces (which tools) to experiment with comes AFTER the listening part!

But every once in a while, there's an opportunity to act fast, to try an experiment with a particular tool. We're working with one group who had exactly this scenario - a fairly big event coming up quickly, and members asking about their social media presence, and they figured they should just jump in and set up an official Twitter account to see what would happen. We held a brainstorming session with a large group of staff from all different departments and they came up with a nice list of objectives which I thought I'd share. In no particular order:

- to keep up with things happening around exhibits, and communicate with exhibitors
- to be the cool kid
- to experiment with a different kind of communication
- to find out who uses Twitter within their community
- to see if members are interested in using this forum
- if it works for meetings/events, could it be used for other activities?
- to hear buzz from the community
- to respond to their members (customer service)
- to reach potential donors, learn things about them that you wouldn't know from any where else
- to explore a new way of communicating (two-way)
- to communicate more concisely, faster, more easily
- to facilitate interaction with members who couldn't attend in person
- to communicate event-specific announcements very easily, as soon as they come up and repeatedly
- to find out what members are particularly interested in (via links shared)
- to drive/listen to conversation about specific topics
- to promote/reward members e.g. contest winners
- to have some fun
- to give staff a voice, allow people to get to know them
- to help exhibitors promote themselves
- to extend the life and space of the event.

Awesome, right? The event itself went great, and especially considering that the staff who were tweeting were pretty new to this, they did a fantastic job. They achieved a lot of these objectives - and those that weren't immediately apparent this time still gave them the impetus to do it bigger and better at their next (much bigger) conference in a few months.

Want to try this at home? Just make sure you go through the exercise of thinking about what you hope to achieve with your experiment. Make a list. Whether you have 3 objectives or 30, keep them in mind during the experiment. Have a debrief afterwards, check things off the list, add new things, figure out how to make it even more awesome next time. If some things don't work like you expected, understand why not. Evaluate, learn, do it all again.

Rock on.

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Only a few spots left for Buzz2009!

Get this badge.

Register now!!!

Only a few spots left! And tell you what, there are a few $100 off discount codes floating around the socialsphere... search on Twitter for #Buzz2009 to find one. (It's so easy already, we need to make you do a little something, don't we!)

Here's a few items we think are particularly cool, in case you haven't seen them already. You know you can subscribe to the Buzz 2009 blog anytime to get the scoop delivered to you. If this event rocks as much as we think it will, we'll do it every year so there should be good content in the blog long after the event is over.

- Live webcast - noon-1:30 pm EST - we've already got close to 3000 people registered for this already, so if you REALLY TRULY can't come in person, sign up here. Here's the scoop on it.

- don't forget there are scholarships available!! Just go here and tell us why you should get one.

- We want to know (whether you'll be in attendance or not!) whether you have identified particular social media goals for your association or organization. Tell us here.

- Rob's really excited about his Association Social Media Spotlight panel session... Find out why. Reason 1, Reason 2, Reason 3... Subscribe to the blog to find out Reason 4.

- I know you want to come and talk to Guy Kawasaki in person about the Alltop for Association Management he set up just for you, don't you!

- In our session we'll be talking through how we've used word-of-mouth tactics specifically for Buzz 2009. We call it our living case study... and yes, we're so meta... Hehe.

- Don't just take our word for how important this event is for you, though. Check out who we got to help us make sure the content and format of our conference was really what the association community needs... and see who's talking about it. Thanks SO so much to everyone who has helped us promote the event. We really wanted to reach as many people as we could who might need this more advanced social media educational content - and using our relationships and social media to do it is a no-brainer, really! :)

- as a matter of fact, click here to see who's talking about it RIGHT NOW.

REGISTER. See you there!

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NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 7/2

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Thank you SO MUCH to Lynn Morton for hosting our chat for us last week. Sounds like we missed a really fab conversation on the following topics:

- What shiny new toys become overwhelming for your non-tech audience?
- The Friend v. Follower dynamic - You can be a friend of someone on one site & a follower on another, is this suggestive of the type of relationship you have with them? Symmetrical v. Asymmetrical relationships, reciprocal relationships seem more purely "social".
- How do "collectors" affect the dynamic of social media relationships? In what way can experienced Twitter users help the newbies to acclimate them to the culture?
- How Twitter has replaced RSS for some people.
- The merits of Tweetdeck & what's cool about the new Seesmic desktop application.

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

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Web design using principles from psychology

Fantastic slidedeck from Joshua Porter. The man is a genius. Read his book. Seriously.

Designing with Psychology in Mind

View more presentations from Joshua Porter.

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